Typical Itinerary
‘Man in His Landscape’
Course title ‘Man in His Landscape’ his imprint, shadow and passage - allows for reportage, direction to develop or ‘Just Landscape’
Saturday - Day 1 - pick-ups from Rome Ciampino airport or Orvieto train station. Welcome to Santa Cristina castle and an introduction to the week ahead by Christian Schwetz, the course instructor. Personal introductions will be given by the course members during a pre-dinner drink followed by dinner at the castle.
Please note. Every course member will be given a 30 minute private, personal one-to-one session during the early part of the week with a progress follow-up on Friday.
Sunday - Day 2 - tour of Santa Cristina castle followed by classroom based digital techniques to include individual assessments and objective setting to be continued throughout a buffet lunch. This will leave the afternoon free so that course members can practice taking breathtaking shots of Pitigliano, a local mediaeval hillside village, in the sunset.
Monday - Day 3 - we start off with an early morning dawn trip to Lake Bolsena, the deepest volcanic lake in Europe, to enjoy the quite solitude of the lake and shoot some great lake-side scenes. Lunch will be a lake-side beach picnic followed by an attractive drive to Orvieto and its environs for landscape and sunset scenes. There will be two drop-off points from which you can choose - cityscape or landscape.
Tuesday - Day 4 - is ‘multiple choice’ - a trip to the magical city of Sienna; a visit to the Etruscan and Medieval ruins nearby to the castle or for the ‘earlybirds’ another dawn trip, this time to the attractive hillside village of Sorano.
Wednesday - Day 5 = this is a free day – to do as you wish - laze around the castle and grounds or take yourself off to visit some of the famous sites of Rome.
Thursday - Day 6
this is a full day of landscapes – ‘dawn to dusk’ guided off-road trips with a picnic lunch. Or for those who only fancy ½ day you can return to castle for some personal space.
Friday - Day 7 - this is ‘crunch-day’ - a day when all the course members have short, individual assessments and a critique of their work that follows-on from the one-to-one sessions completed earlier in the week. The best shots will be printed and be the basis of ‘The Course Exhibition’ which will be displayed in the old stables and viewed over a buffet lunch. The last evening meal will be at a local restaurant, which will give everyone the opportunity to get some night-time shots of Grotte di Castro.
This is also the day you get to choose your ‘free gift’ photograph. Your best shot that we will print on high grade 12 x 8 photographic card and frame as an everlasting memory of your successful transition to a much improved photographer.
Saturday - Day 8 - open forum after breakfast before departure.
Rainy days - in the unlikely event that there is a rainy day, we will arrange portraiture, still life and interiors master-classes and lighting master-classes featuring the latest techniques.
Throughout each practice session Christian will be on call for problem-shooting and individual tuition.
Equipment – Essential
A digital SLR would be best, or a high specification non-DSLR, e.g. Panasonic DMC-LX2. Basically a good camera with manual shutter and aperture controls.
Circular, polariser filter.
ND Grad 1 stop filter.
ND Grad 2 stop filter.
Cable release
Equipment - Desirable
Tripod
ND Grad 3 stop filter
Other grad filters e.g. sunset
Warm-up filters
‘Cokin’ filters recommended brand
Laptop, with Photo-Shop software
Lights or good dedicated flash